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It’s official. Comcast has completed its acquisition of NBC Universal.
On Saturday, the cable giant announced that the transaction is complete. Comcast now owns 51 percent of NBC Universal. General Electric still owns 49 percent of the media conglomerate. The new company, which will be called NBC Universal, is valued at $37 billion.
The deal was originally announced in December 2009. The Federal Communications Commission and U.S. Department of Justice gave the final blessings for the deal earlier this month. Regulators imposed several conditions on the deal to ensure that Comcast would not stifle competition, especially when it comes to new online video providers.
As part of the deal, Comcast will take a minority stake in Hulu, the online video service owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. One of the conditions of the deal is that the new Comcast-owned NBC Universal will give up board seats on Hulu and have a non-voting stake in the company.
The new NBC Universal joint venture will include NBC’s broadcast TV stations, several cable channels, including MSNBC, USA, E! and Bravo, and the Universal movie studio and theme parks as well as Comcast’s 23 million video subscribers and nearly 17 million Internet broadband subscribers.
